Media data streamed for display can be protected using the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) protocol. HDCP is a content protection protocol that is used to protect media content, particularly premium media content. For example, when there is a flow of content between a transmitting device (e.g., a DVD player) and a receiving device (e.g., a television) via the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) channel or the Mobile High-Definition Link (such as MHL v. 3.0 or MHL3) channel, the premium media content being streamed is encoded, requiring the receiving device to be authenticated by the transmitting device before the encoded content can be received, and requiring the transmitting device to be authenticated by the receiving device before the receiving device will accept the encoded content. The authentication of the two devices is performed by exchanging verification data (e.g., public/private keys). In addition, the receiving device must decipher the encoded content prior to displaying the content using, for instance, a session key received from the transmitting device or generated based on information received from the transmitting device.
A media streaming system implementing HDCP may stream encoded data over multiple channels, each of which require authentication and deciphering by a receiving device before display. The HDCP engine of the receiving device can include a different authentication engine and stream cipher engine for each channel. However, including as many authentication engines and stream cipher engines as channels results in large HDCP engine chips that are expensive to produce. This problem is exacerbated as the number of channels in a media streaming system increases.